Vim BTW

Discord Rich Presence for Vim (by the way).

Vim users never quit.

  — Unknown Author

Overview

Vim BTW detects when Vim is running and publishes a Discord Rich Presence status so people can see that you are editing in Vim. When Vim is not running but a supported terminal is open, it shows an idle terminal status. When no supported terminal is running, it clears your Discord presence.

The app is written in Swift, runs as a macOS menu bar utility, and talks to Discord through local IPC instead of the deprecated Discord RPC library.

Features

• Updates Discord Rich Presence from a native macOS menu bar app
• Shows Editing in Vim with the detected filename when Vim is running
• Shows idle terminal status when Terminal or Ghostty is open and Vim is not running
• Clears presence when no supported terminal is running
• Tracks a continuous Vim session timer instead of resetting every update
• Lets you enable or disable presence from the menu bar
• Lets you set or change the Discord Application ID from the menu bar
• Reconnects when Discord restarts
• Supports Apple Terminal and Ghostty

Requirements

• macOS 13 or newer
• Swift toolchain / Xcode command line tools
• Discord desktop app
• A Discord application with Rich Presence assets configured
• Vim running as a vim process

Installation

Clone the repo:

git clone https://www.github.com/m-tedeschi/vim-btw.git
cd vim-btw

Build the app:

chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh

The build creates:

Vim BTW.app

You can move the app wherever you want, or add it to Login Items in macOS Settings.

Usage

Launch Vim BTW.app.

Use the menu bar item to:

• Set your Discord Application ID
• Enable or disable Rich Presence updates
• Refresh presence immediately
• Quit the app

Vim BTW checks for supported terminals and Vim periodically. If Discord is closed, the app keeps running and reconnects when Discord is available again.

Future Improvements

• Add Privacy Mode to hide the current filename
• Improve behavior when multiple Vim windows are open
• Improve behavior for Vim running inside tmux sessions
• Add configurable terminal process names
• Add configurable update interval